Selkie Bride
by Selena
Summary: In which Emily Peggotty becomes the heroine of her own life, and the villain, too.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** : Characters and situations from Charles Dickens' novel "David Copperfield".

 **Spoilers** : For the entire novel.

 **Thanks To** : My valiant beta Kathyh, as ever.

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I.

On the day of her engagement, Emily Peggotty was ready to drown herself. Instead, she encountered James Steerforth and started to fall in love, or at any rate in lust, and her life took another path. For the rest of her life, she would be uncertain whether choosing to follow her original design would have been more painful for her family, or less so, but she always knew the future all of them envisaged for her would never have been hers.

She knew herself to be wicked before the world knew her as such. Only a wicked, ungrateful girl would shudder at the thought of marrying a man such as Ham, devoted, loving and kind, who cherished the dust she stepped on and never questioned a single whim she had. „The best of men, our Ham is," their aunt Clara sighed, and if Emily disputed this, it was only because this title was owned by Uncle Dan, who had raised both Ham and herself, children of his dead brothers. Uncle Dan, who had made it clear to her with every glance and indulgent chuckle that he wished her to to marry her cousin. When he'd first raised the subject, she'd tried to laugh him out of it and told him she would not have Ham, who was like a brother to her, and her Uncle had told her she was of course free to choose, free as a bird. Those were the words his lips spoke, but his eyes told another tale. There was such longing in his looks, in every fond glance he directed at Ham, at herself, at both of them together. Once, Emily had dreamt of becoming a lady and showering Uncle Dan with riches for all he'd done for her. Shedding childhood, she had learned this was not a goal she would ever achieve, or should even desire. Yet here was something she could do for her uncle, and the very fact it took her months and months to agree to it marked her as unworthy.

It was not that she did not love Ham. She always had; why wouldn't she? He was steady and true as oak, and if he could not follow her wild fancies as she spun them, transforming the beaches of Yarmouth into magical places in far away realms, he never mocked them, either. Emily knew he would have died for her, and when a girl at school called Ham an oaf, Emily scratched her face and did not mind the thrashing she received from the teacher one bit. But that was when her body was still a child's, and Ham her brother in all but name.

Becoming a woman meant he started to look at her differently. It meant he touched her differently, if he touched her at all. His hand, that strong and true hand she'd always taken for granted, was covered in sweat now and trembled if she as much as laid a finger on his arm. In former times, she'd run into the waves to help pulling the small boats on shore, but now, when her wet dresses clung to her, he looked at her as if they'd turned her into something less than Emily, some woman-shaped assemblage of flesh instead, and he a starving prisoner.

Ham was not the only one to look at her this way. But she did not mind it from the others, for they had no claim to her, and Ham did. At first, Emily hoped he would change back and be the Ham of old again to her, but after Uncle Dan spoke of marriage and she'd told him she did not want it, it grew worse, not better. Now she imagined she saw hurt as well as hunger in Ham's eyes, as if she'd dealt him a wound which would not heal, dear Ham, her cousin-brother. Selfish, she knew she'd been selfish, and cruel. Why not say yes, and make all those she loved happy again?

Because to be Ham's wife would mean to destroy the last, hidden hope that her old dreams might still come true, and lead her to those sun-kissed lands Davy Copperfield had earnestly read about to her when he'd first come to stay with them, those lands where there were creatures made of scales and where once heathen gods had walked. Because to be Ham's wife would not mean her old life continuing as it was, which Emily would not have minded, it would mean sharing his bed, bearing his children, and this she did not want. „Well, no good woman does," Mrs. Gummidge sniffed when Emily tried to explain in the vaguest of terms, „because men are as beasts, all but a few. Yet it is our duty, Eve's curse, not meant to be joy."

This to Emily affirmed that she was even wickeder than she'd supposed, because it was not the idea of the marital act as such that repelled her. When her best friend Martha had told her about kissing, giggling and blushing, ahead of Emily for the first time in learning something new, Emily had made her demonstrate and tell her more. Martha's lips pressing on her own, her whispery breath on Emily's skin, and those stories; all these did not make Emily feel afraid. The slipped into her dreams instead, enticing as the expensive silk she'd rarely touched. Yet imagining Ham, Ham of all the people touching her this way only induced a faint sense of sickness and disgust, and yet more guilt.

At last, Emily snapped. She'd say yes to Ham and make them all happy, she decided, and then she would let the sea have her. The sea had taken her father, and Ham's father, too, and many others in Yarmouth. She'd always known it was waiting for one more of her family; and this sometimes made her afraid, and sometimes wonder what it would feel like. At any rate, it would cause grief, yet not surprise, not truly. She'd make it look like an accident, so they could bury her in holy ground. Having decided this, she felt free for the first time in years, giddily so, and even Ham's awkward embrace when she told him she would marry him did not matter anymore.

In that moment of joy and liberation, with everyone she loved glowing with happiness and united in celebration, a dream of her past blew into her home and brought the gale of her future with him. Emily hadn't seen David Copperfield, Mas'r Davy as Ham and Uncle Dan still called him, for years. They'd once been children running on the beach together, but she'd always known he was above her station, and if she hadn't, Mrs. Gummidge would have told her clear enough. Still, even Mrs. Gummidge had not minded the boy Davy kissing her and swearing his love, though she did not chuckle and pinch her and Davy's cheeks the way Aunt Clara did, who was in service to Davy's mother and had brought him with her for some mysterious adult reason nobody ever told Emily about. Uncle Dan seemed similarly amused, when he'd scowled at everyone else not Ham who as much as looked in Emily's direction. Later, Emily understood the reason, and it wasn't simply that she and Davy were children and all vows of devotion understood to be child's play, but that they were so far removed in station that the very idea of the two of them actually sharing a future was unthinkable. This made her cross, and that was why she ran away from Davy the second time Aunt Clara brought him to visit, for he seemed part of this conspiracy, listening to her dreams yet never mentioning they could not be fulfilled because he, too, took it for granted they could not.

She had not seen him for some years by now. That he'd turned into a fine young gentleman, she knew; Aunt Clara mentioned it often enough. What brought him for a visit on the very night she'd decided to end her life she did not know, and did not care, but it seemed fitting that he came, so she could bid that part of her childhood farewell, too, with fondness, not regret. The giddiness was still in her, and a devilish urge to tease, and so Emily said: „You must set me free, Davy, or else I cannot marry Ham, for you have the older claim. Do you remember how you asked me for my heart on the beach, and gave me yours?"

She should have addressed him as Mr. Copperfield now that he was a gentleman and she was still a fisherman's daughter, or Mas'r Davy, as Uncle Dan and Ham did, but the sense of freedom that filled her now would not permit it, and so she did not. He appeared not to mind, blushed, laughed and acknowledged the truth of her words. The man he'd brought with him, his friend, looked at them both with interest and declared: „Ah, so that's where you've kept your heart all these years, Daisy. If I'd known, I'd have come here sooner to fight its fair thief for its possession, for I'm a jealous fellow, and I've fancied myself the sole owner of it."

There was much laughter at this jest, and David Copperfield blushed even further, but Emily, for once in her life, did not. She remembered now that Uncle Dan and Ham had spoken of this friend of David's, whom they had met when visiting him at his gentlemen's school, and that David, too, had talked of him years ago, the last time he'd been here. Had praised him to the skies, like one of the heroes in the stories they would act out on the beach, and the name his friend bore sounded suitable heroic: Steerforth. So she'd imagined this friend to be somewhat like Ham, only more refined, square of jaw and tall of stature. This he was not.

Steerforth, it turned out, was only tall when compared to her, but otherwise not only Uncle Dan and Ham but even David were of greater height. He was more slim than muscular, his dark hair was rich enough that if you'd pulled it straight and combed it, you could have made a knot out of it and pinned it up like Martha wore hers, and the generous mouth, his sharp cheekbones and clean shaven chin were more what she'd expect of a woman than a man, as were the long, dark lashes of his eyes. Those eyes, though, had nothing soft in them. They were dark pools only reflecting firelights that danced on them. Emily looked back at him, and said: „Did you truly, Sir? Then he has played us both false, has he, and we should punish him for it."

That, she later thought, was when it happened. At that moment, when she was not herself and spoke boldly to a stranger, because she did not expect to live for much longer, and so all shame and guilt and fear for once were kept away. Or maybe she was herself, that self Uncle Dan and Ham did not know about, the wicked girl who hated what all these men who loved her so had planned for her, and would do anything to prevent it. That girl looked at a man, saw there was darkness there as well as beauty and something to fall into that would destroy just as well as the sea could, and she did not run from it.

„Now there's a thought I won't forget," Steerforth said to her, and while his tone remained light and cheerful, there was no laughter in his eyes, „and if you'll let me, I'll hold you to it."

He then asked for another mug of ale, received and gave a toast to the happy couple, and all his other jests for the rest of the evening were addressed to everyone, as were his stories and words of praise. But Emily had heard what she had heard, had seen what she had seen. And she knew she'd live. It wasn't that she'd been saved from drowning in the sea, but that she'd caught the glimpse of something else to drown in.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

Uncle Dan truly was the best man in the world. His being a brave seaman was the least of it. There must have been times in which supporting his brothers' children, his partner's widow and for a while his unmarried sister bore down on him, and yet Emily had never heard him complain. That he'd taken Mrs. Gummidge in, whom scarcely anyone in Yarmouth liked due to her endless nagging and grating self pity, and never was other than courteous or kind to her, was, Emily suspected, less out of duty to his dead partner, whose widow she was, and more out of awareness that for a widow without money, relations or friends, there was nothing but the workhouse, but it was the way he always treated her as an honored companion instead of a burden, and ensured everyone else in his household treated her the same way, that made it heroic.

And yet there were people to whom Uncle Dan was not kind, and whom he outright condemned. "There are good women, and they're as angels," he said to Emily after Martha's shame became public in Yarmouth. "And then there's them bad women. That girl is now one of them, more's the pity, but don't you let her near you again, Em'ly. She's not fit."

"A bad woman," Mrs. Gummidge had told Emily years earlier, since Uncle Dan had left those kind of explanations to her when Emily, after starting to bleed, required them, "a bad woman is one who is unchaste."

"But what does it _mean_ , Mrs. Gummidge?"

After much hemming and hawing, Mrs. Gummidge had provided the necessary details. "But don't you worry your pretty little head, Em'ly", she'd added. "Don't you talk to anyone but your uncle and cousin and stay with them and me, and do as you're told, and the angels will look over you."

Aunt Clara having been in service meant she had a slightly different idea of what a good and a bad woman was and more practical suggestions. "The worst woman I've known", she'd declared, "she was chaste, but cruel as a bird who'll peck out your eyes, that Jane Murdstone was. There are worse things a woman can be than free with her favours. Now I was lucky," she had said to Emily, "because the old Mr. Copperfield, he was good as gold, and Mr. Murdstone had the devil inside but not in that way. But I've seen households where it's different, and when there's a Master putting his hands on you there isn't much a girl can do. So don't you go into service, Emily, you stay here in Yarmouth. None of them shop owners will put a hand on you if they've got Dan and Ham to answer to, that's for certain."

But Aunt Clara, while ready to shelter Martha for a night, would not have provided her with more than that, either. "What's done cannot be undone," she'd sighed, when Emily, wanting to help Martha, had confided in her. "Best she leaves, goes to where not a soul knows her, poor thing."

So Emily was in no doubt whatsoever as to the fate which awaited her the moment she agreed to do more than smile at a man like James Steerforth, who was so utterly unlike anyone she'd ever known that he might as well have been a prince out of her childhood stories. Not that she considered him one. Or if he was a prince, he was one of the mer people, a selkie to beguile and steal away.

When he asked her what she thought of him, she told him this, and it turned out he did not know of the selkie, or at least pretended not to, so she gave him a story as well as a truth. "Ah, so you're a storyteller like our mutual friend," he said, amused, when she had ended. "I might have known. You are a lot alike, Miss Emily."

She thought of how, even as a child seeking shells on the beach with him, she'd been aware there was a difference between young Mas'r Davy and herself; every word out of his mouth had pronounced him _other_ , a gentleman, and in fact Aunt Clara had been careful not to let him imitate their way of speaking, as if it would taint him once he returned with her to where she was in service.

"We're not," she replied. "Sir. For if we were, I'd be a lady, and you would not talk with me the way you do."

At this point, it wasn't that he had said anything improper, or that could not have been heard by her entire family. But that was because they heard it differently than Emily did, and they did not see what she saw, looking at James Steerforth.

"No," Steerforth said, his crooked smile fading, "no, that's not true. I talk with him the very same way, for that's my manner."

Which could be the truth for all she knew, for she hadn't seen Steerforth talk to any ladies, and there was no reason, was there, to believe that she ever would.

"Well, that marks you a true mer man then," Emily answered. "They don't make a difference between princes and beggars, and they come to fishermen and their wives most of all."

Some years ago, after Emily had begun to bleed but before her body had finished reshaping itself, and was tricking her at every turn, she and Martha had each shed their seven tears into the sea that were supposed to call a selkie lover. They'd heard the story from the herring girls who came from Scotland to Greater Yarmouth each season, and it had caught their fancy. It was still more done as child's play than as anything else, and yet they had waited a good while, until deciding to laugh about it and leave.

"Will he not marry you?" she'd asked Martha about the man who'd brought Martha to public ruin, a man who had not come from the sea but was one of Yarmouth's own and a shop owner to boot, and Martha, worn out by crying into dry despair, had shook her head.

"He said no man would put a hat on he'd shat in."

"But in the story you just told me it was the fisherman who kept a selkie wife, and stole her from the sea, not the other way around", Steerforth said. "Are the stories different if the selkie is a man? Now that I would consider slander. Since you've designed the tile of mer man for me, I do declare we men are just as much in need of getting caught as we are of doing the catching."

The laughter had returned to his voice, and yet he had a way of making her think he wasn't laughing at her but with her.

"None of the selkies, men or women, ever stay," Emily said. "When will you return to Oxford, Sir?"

For David Copperfield on the night of her engagement had told them Steerforth was at the university there, "getting bored in the highest tradition", Steerforth had added, and Emily, who had never owned more than two books in her life, one of them her late parents' bible, yet had used every chance to read the novels provided by the circulating library, had not understood how anyone living among freely available books, which a gentleman at a university surely did, would ever be bored.

"If I'm a mer man, then yours is the fishing net which caught me," he replied. "So that is for you to decide."

And there it was, the twist that turned a jest into courting, though courting, between the likes of him and the likes of her, could never be more than a jest. Unless she had read him true, the night she met him and saw destruction beckoning.

She thought she had.

She also thought he did not yet know, and that was good, for she didn't know for sure, either, did not know whether she would have the strength. Uncle Dan would forgive her anything, anything but this, and so if she followed this path, no matter what happened, she would not see his dear face again, nor Ham's, or Mrs. Gummidge's, or Aunt Clara's. At least they would not grieve for her the way they would if she had died, as she had planned.

Steerforth remained at Yarmouth under the pretense of wanting to learn how to sail, and he bought an old boat to be changed into a yacht for him, employing Uncle Dan and Ham and a great many others, and so the town thought well of him, for it had been a hard year for fishing. That he had the money to do this, and the leisure, made them consider him lazy if he'd been one of their own, but princely, as he was not. It was not all pretense, either; he did learn how to sail, and took much satisfaction from it.

As a child, Emily had always feared the sea would claim Uncle Dan and Ham, as it had her father. Yet she did not fear for James Steerforth, nor any longer for herself. The sea would not take them, not now at any rate. It knew that returning them safely on land would cause the greater damage.

At first it seemed that Steerforth only wished to play at courtship, as he was playing at being a seafaring man. Emily, who had play-acted for much of her childhood, recognized this, but it wasn't what she wanted now. You could not play at falling, then, mid air, declare that you would rather have remained on the ground. You either fell, or you never put a foot wrong to begin with. He might think it was kinder to court her in secret, and then be done with her in secret, so that they both could return to who they had been before, with no one but them the wiser. But that was because he truly was a selkie, shedding skin and turning himself into someone else as easily as he breathed. He had not understood she'd told him that first story as a warning, too. The fisherman kept the selkie woman's seal skin, and she could not return to who she had been.

When Emily told him she'd come with him if he took her away, that was when Steerforth understood, she saw it in his eyes. Not a secret; not something to be left behind, as the yacht which he'd given her name would be. She did not believe it would be much for him that her family and friends would curse him, for if he had felt any true regard for them, he would never have remained in Yarmouth. No, but he did care what his friend thought of him, that she knew.

"Why do you call him 'Daisy'?" Emily had asked, for it was this, not, as she had first assumed, the old childish form of "Davy" that Steerforth called the first boy she'd ever kissed, and who'd kissed her, when kissing had been nothing more than make believe given touch.

"Because he's that innocent," Steerforth had replied, "and must remain so, or the world will be a poorer place."

For all that he had teased her about feeling jealous of his ownership of David Copperfield's heart when she'd first met him, he'd spoken truth as well, she'd realized this by now. That look of glowing admiration, of adoration, even, which David had given him whenever Emily had seen them in each other's company would no longer be Steerforth's to claim. For gentleman or not, David truly loved her family, this Emily did not doubt, and he would not consider any man who broke their hearts a hero, or a friend. He'd despise such a man.

Steerforth stretched out an arm and brushed his fingers against her cheek then. Despite his recent sailing, they were still lacking in all that was rough; these were the hands of someone who had others work for him for all his life. And yet there was nothing soft about this touch, or the way he looked at her, recognizing in her what she'd seen in him from the start: a beckoning towards the maelstrom.

„Would you be happy, if I left and you never saw me again?"

„I would be dead within the week," she said, which was true, though not quite in the way he took it, as one more tribute to the power he had to make people love him. She did not know whether to call what she felt for him love, though it was strong and powerful. But she was more certain now than ever that she did not want to be Ham's wife, that she couldn't, wouldn't bear it, and that she wanted to have this man, who was beautiful in ways a man should not be and alien to all she'd been taught to trust. The thought of Ham's hands on her, come the wedding day, that thought now made her sick, while Steerforth's casual touch just now made her tremble, and not in fear.

„Well then," he said. „You shall live, and we will leave together. And let hell follow."


	3. Chapter 3

III.

When she had dreamed of being a lady as a girl, Emily did not know any true ladies on whose existence she measured and tailored her dreams. They were, instead, formed by stories. Not Aunt Clara's stories, which did feature ladies but were disappointingly empty of wonder, making her mistress, David Copperfield's mother, sound like the kind and silly Widow Sparring who'd lost her late husband's place on the fish market because she couldn't count. No, Emily's dreams fed on fairy tales and then on books, and thus she dreamt not only of fine, rich clothes but beautiful buildings, of music and adventure, of seeing places where there were castles on mountains reaching to the clouds, or full of molten fire.

Most of these dreams did come true. Steerforth took her to those far away places. France first, then Switzerland and Italy. When the first day passed where she heard sounds around that might as well have been bird cries for there was not a word of English amongst them, he hired a teacher for her as well, a jolly fat woman who took her mind and shaped it new by all the words she learned. Emily had always been a quick study, and when Davy had visited them during her childhood, had stolen all new words he'd used and kept them for herself after he'd left. Learning another language turned out to be not too dissimilar, save that the French Madame Jouvet knew what Emily was doing, and Davy had not.

She loved learning new words, still, not least because it allowed her to keep the guilt at bay for a while. She knew what she had done. She had betrayed Uncle Dan, Ham and the others in the worst way, as only a wicked woman would, and if she was happy instead of sad even for a day, that only proved her wicked nature the more. Yet it was Emily who'd done this, Em'ly Peggotty who was, not Emilie or Emilia. Learning to speak in foreign tongues, as possessed people did in the Bible, also gave her a name for James Steerforth that she could call him by. She couldn't address him as James in English, the way Ham had been Ham and Martha was Martha to her; every time she'd tried in her mind, in the months leading up to this, the gulf between them seemed to widen, and the word stuck in her throat. Davy, who himself posed the problem of being both Davy from her childhood and Mr. Copperfield in the present, had called him "Steerforth", but that, too, implied an equality which simply was not true for her. But if Emilie and Emilia were strangers who had not left a heritage of heartbreak in Yarmouth, they could call the man at their side "Jacques", who'd never been in Yarmouth, either.

"Nor anywhere else," he said on a sunny afternoon while she was trying to find a scar on his body, letting her fingertips explore nude skin, for this, too, she was learning. "Jacques sounds like a French farmer tending his vineyards with little imagination, if you ask me. Or a monk. Are you trying to tell me something?"

She told him, in halting French words, that he'd be a terrible farmer, but that she could see him as a monk. While this amused him greatly, Emily meant it, though she had to return to English to explain. As far as she could tell, he had no scars, not even little ones left by fish hooks, and a man who'd reached two decades without them would never have the patience to tend to anything for long. Tending land, tending sea, there was one thing they had in common: they made you bleed before too long. On the other hand, given the way he and David had talked about their school days, he must have been happy there, and she, whose only school had been the overcrowded one in Yarmouth that taught girls like her to count, write, mark their bible and to sew, had thought it did sound like the way monasteries had been described in tales: boys and men dressed in the same clothing, living in their own world and trying to win the favor of some dreaded superior.

"Well, if you put it like that," he said, still in his usual light tone, though he did not smile any longer, and the skin beneath her fingers drew together as if some cool breeze had mingled with the honeyed, warm French air. "Presumably trying to keep some Abbot happy couldn't be harder than old Creakle and his clammy fingers and his silly daughter."

There was a harshness in him about people which he hadn't shown at Yarmouth, and which could appear without warning. It led to their first true argument when he gave it voice while attending a ball with her. There were other English people present, and one of them, a titled man who'd kissed her hand and listened to her new French words that were no differently accented than the ones Steerforth used, murmured: "Enchanting. I say, old chap, wherever did you find her?"

"Among barbarians," Steerforth replied cheerfully. "But then, what is a pearl without swine it needs rescuing from?"

Just like that, the wall made out of Emilia and Emilie fell down and did not matter anymore, and what was left was Emily, who'd seen Uncle Dan return bone-tired from the sea and yet find the time to carve a comb made out of whale bone for her. Emily, who'd listened to Ham making plans to save enough money for them to travel to London, for he knew she longed to see the world, Ham, who'd been helping out where he could this summer in addition to working for Uncle Dan. Emily, who'd watched Aunt Clara bring a child not hers with her and care for him during what were supposed to be the few free days Aunt Clara had while being in service, because that boy's stepfather was a man without a heart. A gentleman, though. A gentleman like the one laughing now about Steerforth's comment, like Steerforth himself. Emily, who'd witnessed all of her family welcoming Steerforth in their midst, treating him as the most cherished of guests, while he thought this of them.

"None of you are worth kissing the dust my people step on, and I'm not, either," she exclaimed, and left the ball behind, a Cinderella who at that moment longed for nothing but reduce the palace around her to ash.

It was the first argument, but not the last, though she found that being angry made her a creature of the flesh as much as longing and tenderness did, and often ended the same way. This, too, was new; Martha and her whispered stories had never informed her of it. But then, Martha, so looked down upon by all of Yarmouth, had repented in action as well as thought and word, was surely a much better woman than Emily, whose tears and fury had yet to result in ending the state that brought forth both.

"A word of advice, young lady," Steerforth's servant Littimer said to her one night when he found her in the kitchen of the lodgings Steerforth had rented, cutting up fish. She was not supposed to do anything related to the meals, which at first had been very odd to her, but also a relief, and now increasingly left her with a sense of loss, of being adrift like a boat without an anchor. "Mr. James has been very patient so far, which is, I may add, not his usual habit. But if I were you, I would try to remember that to cater to the whims of one's sole source of income is what is expected of anyone in a position such as yours."

Littimer, with a nondescript face and a smoothness of manner that reminded her of a too often washed linen where all the original colouring had been bleached and ironed out of, was someone Emily had never liked. At first she had assumed this was because the only servant working in a gentleman's household she'd ever known had been Aunt Clara, whom she'd never seen at Aunt Clara's places of service, and the idea of another person serving _her_ , even if it was only in as much as Littimer served Steerforth in whose company she was, was unsettling in its newness. Then she'd decided it was because Littimer never talked to her save to convey messages from his master, so she had no idea what kind of man he was, and which opinions he held, and yet she often caught him looking at her as intently as any man in Yarmouth had ever done. But now, when he finally did say something of a personal nature, she found herself repeating, like a dumb child: "A position such as mine?"

He pursed his lips but did not add anything. She put down the knife she'd used on the fish. It wasn't that she needed to eat anyway. She just had wanted to hack something.

"And what, pray, is my position, Mr. Littimer?" Emily asked, her voice sounding thin in her own ears, as did that carefully learned and practiced way of speaking in which she'd dressed up Em'ly that was.

"I can tell you this much," Littimer said. "It is less secure than mine. After all, I have been with Mr. James since his school days, and he has yet to grow tired of _my_ services."

There was something other than blandness and greed in his gaze now, an ill-disguised glee, and she understood that he'd resented having to serve her all this time, who, if Aunt Clara's stories about the strict order that placed footmen and butler far above maids were anything to go by, he saw far beneath his own station, let alone that of his Master.

"Understand that I am acting as your friend," he said. "You have been much admired in good company. If you take my counsel, this might continue for a good while longer. There are, after all, things which even I cannot do for Mr. James."

Emily had considered herself to be aware of what she'd done from the moment she'd first laid eyes upon James Steerforth. Everything she'd ever been taught from childhood onwards had told her that this made her wicked, that there could be no good ending, and that there would be punishment. In fact, this knowledge had been part of what had made her act. And yet there had also been that stubborn streak of hope that maybe all those other tales from her childhood would turn out to be true instead, the ones from the books Davy had told her while they were walking on the beach, leaving the adults and their indulgent amusement behind. She hadn't realised how strong that hope had become until now, standing in kitchen in a far away land with gutted fish and a man aiming to do much the same to her.

By now, they were in Naples, or rather, nearby, for Steerforth had rented a villa near the sea in a gesture that was meant to make her happy, or so she had assumed, breathing the salty air again and listening to the sea gulls cry, talking to the children who ran there as she'd once done, chatting in the words she picked up from them, which were quite different from the Italian Madame Jouvet had taught her in addition to French. When she'd said she was a fisherman's daughter, one of the older girls, who knew what it meant that Emily was staying in a villa with an English gentleman, had asked her whether she was like Lady Hamilton then, who'd lived here half a century ago. Lady Hamilton, who'd been the English Ambassador's wife here in Naples and the friend of the Queen, but before that a woman of ill repute, coming from nowhere. There had been stories about her even at Yarmouth, mostly because that most glorious of heroes to all seamen, Lord Nelson, had loved her. "She was no better than she should be, though," Mrs. Gummidge had declared in satisfaction, "and came to a bad ending when he died. It's ever thus, my girl." Lady Hamilton's first name had been Emily's, and when the girl had said this villa used to belong to her, Emily couldn't help herself, she had wondered whether choosing this place of all places had been meant as a promise.

Sir William Hamilton had married Emily Lyons that was. He'd been not just a gentleman, but nobility, the intimate of kings and queens, and yet he had married her.

Or maybe the choice of place had just been meant as a joke told by Steerforth against himself, Emily thought now, staring at Littimer. For all his pride, Steerforth loved those.

"There's nothing good about any company I've been in since I left my home," she whispered, turned, and left the kitchen behind.

She did not say anything to Steerforth about any of this, as he took her to see the volcano, something, he said, he'd always wanted to do, adding a phrase about the Romans and the sore lack of a Vesuvius in current day London. Exploring the volcano was done first on mules and then on foot, took all day even if one started when it was still dark, and for the life of her Emily had not imagined how it should be done in one of those beautiful dresses he had bought her. So she had borrowed the clothes he'd worn when he went sailing. When she'd been a small child, and money was very scarce, she'd sometimes worn Ham's old discarded clothing; Ham grew so quickly. But dressing as a boy, even to help with the work, became impossible once Mr. Gummidge died and Uncle Dan offered Mrs. Gummidge a place in his home, for Mrs. Gummidge declared the practice scandalous. "And her a girl, Dan'eel, and her a girl!" she'd exclaimed, which had been the end of that. So this wasn't the first time Emily wore male clothing, but it was the first time in many years. While Steerforth was of course taller than she was, he wasn't tall for a man, and she could roll up the sleeves and trousers easily. Steerforth was delighted.

"I knew you'd make a pretty boy," he said, his dark eyes dancing as they had been that first evening, when he'd watched her tease David, and something in her clicked and put the pieces altogether.

"Then I shall be one today," she replied, and the giddiness of her decision was that which she'd felt when running along a jagged timber which overhung the deep sea as a girl, scaring Davy the visitor from another world in the process. "Call me Pratolina."

Pratolina was the local word for daisy, and he understood her meaning at once, she could tell from the startled way he drew back for a moment. But then he drew close again, and something shifted between them. "Pratolina," he said. "Yes."

If being Emilie and Emilia had kept Emily's guilt at bay for a while before proving to be unsafe levees against that flood at best, Pratolina freed her for one miraculous day and night altogether. By now, she'd lived with Steerforth long enough to know how gentlemen moved and talked, and she remembered all those times with her childhood friend in great detail, so speaking as David Copperfield would was no more difficult than dancing had been, once she'd learned the steps.

When she'd chatted with the mule driver about his animals and joined one of his songs to them, picking up the words quickly, Steerforth said: "You should have gone to Oxford, not me, with your gift for language." There was no joke in his tone; instead, he said it wistfully, admiringly, and while a part of her knew he'd never have said it to Emily Pegotty even if she had been born male, because fishermen did not go to university, she replied as David Copperfield would have, pleased with the compliment and taking it as such. When the mules had to stop, and they started to climb, Steerforth stumbled once, she didn't try to catch him, she laughed, taking his arm and falling onto the ground beneath them with him instead, which was warm, and oddly soft, not rocky, with the black and grey pebbles so small that they were more like sand.

"Now that's a dirty trick, Pratolina," he said, laughing as well, and they ended up rolling in the dark earth like children, smearing each other's faces, before getting up again. They could not quite reach the top, but got far enough to stare into one of the smaller craters. Once, she hadn't known such mountains with fire in them existed outside of fairy tales.

Emily had not forgotten what Littimer had said, not one hateful syllable of it, but she was not Emily that day and night. Emily had never told Steerforth she loved him, for a great number of reasons, starting with the fact this seemed a betrayal too many, especially after she'd learned how little he truly thought of her family, and ending with a fancy that the words, once spoken, would remain true in a way she could no longer alter. But Pratolina said them, for Pratolina was not Emily, not any longer.

"I love you," she said, when they had returned from their excursion, too exhausted even to get out of their dirty clothes, yet too awake to fall asleep. The house was very quiet; the maids who were doing the washing were gone for the day, and Littimer, wherever he was, mercifully kept out of sight. They were on the terrace that opened up to a garden. Supposedly, it had once been decorated with many a statue found near here when Sir William Hamilton was Ambassador, but these riches had long since been transported to England, and thus there was only the basin of an empty water fountain left. It still shone brightly in the moonlight.

"Do you?" he asked. "I truly thought that you hated me by now." For a moment, she was not sure whether he said this to Emily, but then he added, "Daisy." The night painted him a study in contrasts, moonlight and shadows drawing their lines over him, and she stretched out her hand, caressing his dusty cheek with her thumb, making her mark on him.

"But that is why you did what you did," she murmured. "To make me hate you. So I would not be destroyed."

She understood this. After all, it had been what made Emily abandon the thought of seeking her death in the sea to escape, and chose him instead, though if she'd then believed it would cause the lesser pain to Uncle Dan and Ham, she'd since changed her mind. But she was not speaking as Emily now.

"The power to destroy me is not yours, Steerforth," she said, using David's voice which was less crisp than his and yet no longer that of the child Davy who'd called to her to come down from the jagged timber, and the name she'd never used before to address him fell naturally from her lips.

"We'll see about that," he said hoarsely, and this time, when she kissed him, while he tore away her borrowed clothes, she bit hard enough to scar him at last.


	4. Chapter 4

IV.

"I told you this would happen," Littimer said to Emily after she'd risen, washed the dust out of her hair and got dressed, only to find the house was quiet still, and Littimer's the only voice in it. Sleeping late was something she'd never done before; it had not been in her who'd had to rise before the dawn for all of her life. But this time, having not fallen asleep until sunrise, she'd slept until noon. "Yet you would not listen. Well, listen to me now, young woman."

The midday sun that fell through the windows exposed every bit of dust the maids, so recently hired from the village, had overlooked. It made her think of the castle where the princess had slept for a hundred years, and for a moment, she was absurdly grateful Littimer was there, unchanged, and thus evidence no more time could have passed than a few days since last she saw him.

Then it sank into her that he'd switched from calling her "young lady" to "young woman", and the memory of Aunt Clara saying how the housekeeper at her first place of employment had chided her for using the wrong designation for any friend of the Master's returned. There was a significance there, a fatal significance, if only she could grasp it in that strange daze her long sleep had left her with.

"Mr. James has gone. He had me pack while the two of you were on your little expedition, so don't think he's run off on a whim. You see, we've been receiving letters from a noble mother prepared to receive a repenting son again and to release more funds to him, but only if he ends a certain unbecoming association. And it _is_ her money, after all, which is providing the means for this fine life. We're not inheriting until she is departed from this Earth."

Mrs. Gummidge had done this sometimes, Emily thought, used "we" in this peculiar way. "We're getting too old to stay out all night at sea, Dan'eel, we should think of those that worry at home about us," she'd told Uncle Dan when she meant he should let Ham do more of the fishing. Madame Jouvet had called this "plural" and added something about "pluralis majestatis" and "pluralis modestiae". Which Emily had taken as differing modes to unite pompousness with entitlement. The way Littimer used it right now also sounded smug. She heard the words, and in purely technical terms, she understood what he was saying, but at the same time, it was as if someone had put her beneath a wall of glass, with Littimer's mouth opening and closing without making sense or sound.

"Now, Mr. James is of course aware that you yourself are not in a position to return to the joys of hearth and home in England, such as they are. Nor does he wish you to feel abandoned. Therefore, it is my pleasure to inform you a worthy man and a restored reputation will both be yours."

She shook her head; this made even less sense than anything else he'd said so far.

"Well, I'll admit it is something of a sacrifice on my part," Littimer said, looking her up and down in a mixture of amusement and contempt. "If I'd thought of marriage before, it was to a respectable woman with an even more respectable dowry, not a penniless cast-off hailing from the gutter. But you do possess a certain adaptability, your countenance is undeniably pleasant, and if making you Mrs. Littimer is the price I have to pay for reconciling Mr. James to his worthy mother, well, it is a most Christian thing to accept, is it not?"

The little pleased smile with which he added the last part, the way he wetted his lips after finishing the sentence, this finally did it; the horror of what he'd said became real to her. She was not dreaming. The sea hadn't come for her, nor death on land; betrayal had, fitting, given her sin. Betrayal in the form of this creature, to whom she'd been handed over the way the boat bearing her name in Yarmouth had the moment Steerforth had been done with it. If she'd had held one of the knives in the kitchen right then, she'd have used it right then and there, but she did not. In fact, Littimer seemed to have made very sure there was nothing but some soft fruit in the room. Whether this was for his own safety or for some belief she would harm herself, she had no idea, and cared less. It came to her then, every curse ever used in Yarmouth among the boatmen and the fishwives; they rose in her like the flood after the tide, and she spilled them on Littimer, screaming as she'd never done in her life, for screaming was not what ladies did, and she'd so desperately wanted to be a lady since she had first understood that she was not. Screaming now felt like cleansing fire, and if she'd known, oh, if she'd known, she would have pushed him not onto the ground but into the volcano.

Once she'd arrived at "boat-licker," she had to draw breath. By now, Littimer's expression was mildly indignant.

"My, my," he said. "What a common person. I'll have to cure you of that. But then, we do have the time. You're young and healthy; we'll spend a good long life together. And a profitable one; I'd be surprised if Mrs. Steerforth does not increase my salary once she has learned of my sacrifice, and as for Mr. James, if you listen to me, we can use any twinges of guilt that might come our way for the occasional precious little trinket. In fact, I think we should adopt one of the mewling infants from the Neapolitan streets and present it as yours before returning to England. This would set us up for life."

He was using "we" again, this time creating a conjunction between him and herself that disgusted her as much as the idea of a child raised by this man horrified her. She tried to leave the room then, with no other destination in mind than the wish to be out of Littimer's presence, but he was quicker than she'd have anticipated, and she found herself locked into her own room.

"For your own protection," he said through the door. "I'll let you out again once I can see some gratitude and acceptance of life's necessities on your part, my dear. As I said: we do have the time. The villa's rent has been paid for until the end of this month, and June has only just started. Mr. James will have to do on his own for a while, and you know, I suspect in his current mood he might indeed wish to."

A part of her thought: _this is what you deserve, Emily Peggotty. Ham was a good man, the best but one, and you broke his heart because you could not bear the thought of sharing life and bed with him, so now you have been given to a villain like this, to do with you as he pleases._ That almost hurt more than Steerforth leaving her in the first place, for that was what had happened to Martha and the man she'd fallen in love with, and so Emily had always been aware it was a possibility. But she had thought that at least there was truth between them, and that they both sought the same in each other, even if it was a dark thing. That he had regard for her that was greater than for a toy you could hand over to another after growing tired of it.

But why should he? He had shown no such regard for anyone else, save perhaps David, and that, too, might have been a reason for doing this to her; that she had seen him as clearly there as he'd seen the wickedness in her. There was still some torn, discarded clothing lying on the floor that smelled of him. If the room had a fireplace, she'd have burned it, like the fishermen and their wives burned the seal skin of their selkie lovers. As it was, she crumbled it beneath her hands, and hated herself even more for crying while doing so. Cursing had helped her before, so she started doing it again, but her voice failed her and turned those curses into cries as well. Weak, weak, weak: no wonder that loathsome creature outside thought he could claim her. Then she thought of Uncle Dan, and imagined him saying: "Em'ly, Em'ly, what are ye doing, child?"

It was a picture that used to torment her when she painted it in her mind. Yet now, it had the opposite effect. Uncle Dan had a dignity that had nothing to do with the pride she'd seen on display in the salons and ballrooms. He'd call gentlemen Mas'r and Sir, but he knew his worth, and he'd never crawl, nor would he allow a man like Littimer to determine his fate.

No matter how much she deserved punishment, Emily thought, she would not bear it from Littimer. Her bedroom was on the third floor, but there were vines trailing below, and she did not have much weight. The villa was so near the beach that she could hear the sea roaring, for it was a windy day, and the sound called to her with its aching familiarity and promise.


	5. Chapter 5

V.

Her flight into the night had been successful, but over a year passed before Emily set foot on English soil again. First, she'd remained with the wife of a fisherman whom she'd previously made friends with while walking on the beach; then, she'd found some work as a maid for travelling Englishwomen, who had brought her as far as Calais. When they asked her for her name, she said "Clara" in honour of her aunt, not that Aunt Clara had any reason to be proud of her, and hoped the name would also prevent anyone she'd ever known from finding her.

It was a strange thing, living when both past and future were gone. Sometimes she thought she only lived to mock her own certainty of destruction, and sometimes she thought she did because she still owed a debt. _He_ 'd been a coward, stealing away without telling her what he planned to her face, but then, she had been guilty of the same sin, leaving Ham and Uncle Dan with nothing more than a letter. There was nothing she could do to atone for breaking their hearts. What she _could_ do was to take responsibility and accept judgment from the only people who had a right to pronounce it on her.

What she would do then, she did not know.

Being a maid was both easier and harder than she'd thought it would be, growing up with Aunt Clara's stories of service. Being silent except when spoken to but always alert to hear a command was harder than the tasks themselves, as her mind found it hard not to wander and circle when having nothing definite to do. Then there was the way they thought nothing of reducing the money they'd agreed to give, or not to pay at all. "And whom would you complain to, my girl?" another maid, who'd hired Emily as undermaid to assist her, asked. "Those Frenchies here? You're a runaway, aren't you, so be grateful we don't complain about _you_."

Thus she was still at Calais when she heard a familiar voice from a new arrival at the inn. Littimer didn't see her at all; he was too busy talking to the innkeeper, enquiring whether there were open positions among travelling gentlemen of British origin. "For a temporary or a permanent position?" the innkeeper returned, and Littimer said it might be either. "My previous employment," he added, "has unfortunately come to an abrupt ending."

"Did the gentleman die? Hope it wasn't sickness. We don't hold with that."

"As far as I know," Littimer said disdainfully, "Mr. James is in excellent health, coasting Spain. His manner, alas, could bear improvement. I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear much from any gentleman, and I have borne a great deal from Mr. James. But some insults go too far."

Her heartbeat grew slower again, as she crept away and heard no more. She still did not want to breathe the same air with Littimer if she could avoid it, and thus used what little money she'd saved to take the boat to Dover. This left her penniless once she'd touched British soil, and still shaken from the encounter that almost happened, for it brought back all her wildness. She imagined the coast of Spain looking much like that of Naples had. During the night of her escape, she'd told the sea to take Steerforth, meaning every word, but she'd been more than a little mad then, and thus it did not weigh heavily on her compared with her other sins. Now, when time had passed, there was no such excuse, and yet her mouth repeated the words just as her treacherous body remembered what it had been like to be with him.

No, she was not yet fit to face her family's judgment. Instead of heading home, Emily went to London, and sought to find employment, mayhap someone who could make enquiries as to how the Peggottys of Yarmouth were faring. She did not find employment. Instead, Martha found her.

It was a wonder, seeing her, that familiar face, no longer a girl but a woman, white and hurried. The last time they had spoken seemed a lifetime ago, and Emily could still remember Martha crying "oh, I was once like you". Now, there were no tears; they were alike again.

"Come with me," Martha said, and brought Emily to a house swarming with inmates, like a run down, overcrowded beehive, where she'd rented a small room. She'd lived in London ever since leaving Yarmouth, it turned out, and said she'd been on the lookout for Emily ever since hearing of her fate. They were sitting together on the bed, for there was only one chair in the room.

"Then you cannot tell me of them," Emily said, torn apart by the mixture of gratitude for Martha being alive, being there, and of shame that for her part she'd not thought of looking for Martha, had sent no one after her when Steerforth was still providing her the means to do so, "of those I hurt. Oh Martha, I do not even know who of my family is alive, and who might be dead!"

Martha put her hand on Emily's. "They all live. Your uncle loves you and forgives you." After a pause, she added: "He told me this himself, he did."

This did not sound like the uncle who'd called Martha, with no hesitation, a fallen, wicked woman, declaring Emily should not see her again, and yet Martha had never lied to Emily. Upon further prodding, she said that David Copperfield had sought and found her, had brought her and Uncle Dan together.

For a while, Emily sat in silence. She hadn't realised how deeply her conviction that her uncle would never forgive her had been rooted in her until Martha had shaken it, just now.

"But do you want to be forgiven?" Martha asked slowly, watching her.

"How do you mean?"

"When I had nothing else to hate, not even him who brought me to this state," Martha said, "I still hated myself. Good people, they don't understand, but it can be strength, that feeling. It burns, and crackles, and at least that's something when all else in you is dead, and so you do go on. But it also means you never try to change. Why would you, if you are so much of a wretch? Do you remember the baker at home who broke his left leg? It healed all wrong, and caused him pain each time he took a step, but when they told him it would have to be broken once more so it could heal properly, he was too afraid. He didn't want to go through that again."

Emily did remember. The baker had turned his constant pain into spite, had beaten his wife, which everyone knew, and had never given anyone a good word.

"You helped me when no one else would," Martha said. "I still remember all the names they called me. But you said I was still your friend, and that it was your friend you saw when you looked at me. Will you believe me when I say these words to you?"

"But you and I are the same," Emily whispered. "We were then, too. The others simply didn't know it of me then. Uncle Dan is _good_."

Martha sighed, and repeated: "Do you want to be forgiven?"

Emily opened her mouth to say she wanted none of this to ever have happened, and swallowed the words, unspoken, because they were not true and became less so the more she thought about them. She wished she'd never caused her family pain, that much was certain. But she would not have made Ham a good wife, and because he loved her, he would have noticed, sooner or later, that she did not love him in the same way. She wished she had not run away like a coward, but the running itself, she did not regret. Much of what she'd seen and what she'd learned since leaving her home she'd treasured, and to travel, to seek out foreign lands had fulfilled something in her she thought the seamen must feel as well.

Trying the worst, Emily conjured up James Steerforth in her mind the way she was half certain she'd conjured him from the sea, the way the fairy tales taught, crying seven tears to summon a lover from another world who'd never be true. She heard him ask: "Would you be happy, if I left and you never saw me again?" And heard herself reply: "I would be dead within the week."

She'd meant it, as she had meant it, much later, when she'd asked the sea to take him. She'd never see him again in this life if she'd anything to do with it, that much was certain. But if she were to say she wished she'd never known him at all, it would be a lie.

Maybe that was her broken leg, so wrongly healed. Or maybe facing this truth was the second breaking the baker had refused.

"I want to _live_ ," Emily said, crumbling, put her head into Martha's lap while Martha held her tight. "God help me, but I want to live."

Martha stroked her hair the way she'd sometimes done when they were girls, the way Emily had done that last night when Martha had lain prostrate and sobbing with despair.

"Then you do want to be forgiven." After a while, she rose. "Stay here," she said. "I'll be back soon."

When Martha had gone, Emily rose from the bed. She felt worn out and spent; and yet, renewed. So much she had not known until this hour: that Martha was there, and had made a new life; that Uncle Dan still loved her; and that she was truly done with seeking out destruction.

She still was not sure about forgiveness, though. Not to receive, and not to give. But maybe wanting to live would teach her how to do both, for she could not live as the girl she'd been before, the one they'd all undeservedly adored without knowing her. And she could not live in any of the guises she'd sought after running away, for she was done with these. She would need to find a new self to be, and that one undisguised and known.

There were steps on the stairs, and someone knocked. As Emily went to open the door, it seemed to her she was moving towards her past, present and future.


End file.
